Who foots the final bill?

After years of denying residents and councillor colleagues easy and reasonable access to information to which they are entitled, Wokingham Borough Council (WBC) is to be forced to reveal, albeit in part only, details of its regeneration and other extravagances.

In an attempt to mitigate the true total cost, it (WBC) intends to camouflage the sum involved by releasing details in tranches rather than a single final figure.

The promise that council borrowing together with its other associated costs, incompetence and denial will cost council tax payers nothing, cannot, nor will it be honoured – the end user always has to foot the bill.

The purchase of a number of properties by the council as “an investment in those future” (same investment if you have to sell the family silver to afford it) has in part been necessitated by the fact that many other landlords view such investments as carrying unacceptable levels of risk.

The admission after months of being unwilling to own up to paying newcomers, welcome as they are, to Peach Place rent deals as an “incentive” to take up space in the development disadvantaging other long standing retailers who stood by the town throughout the chaos and disruption of regeneration and indeed forced some out of business, is nothing short of a betrayal of loyalty.

The eventual total end cost of the council’s unnecessarily reckless ego trip based on the scant information provided to date, taking in account, loans, interest, regeneration and it’s related costs, must surely be heading toward the £1bn mark.

The truth of the matter is that the full extent of the final bill will never truly be known.

There are simply too many inconvenient truths hidden away for them ever to be allowed to be exposed to public scrutiny.

So much for democracy.